


First Steps

by incognitajones



Series: Last Train [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canada, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Relationship, F/M, Family Issues, figuring out what they're doing as they go along
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-05-26 16:17:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15004628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/incognitajones
Summary: Rey and Ben might love each other... but they don’t quite know how to live together yet, and neither of them is what you’d call emotionally forthcoming.(A sequel toLast Train, made up of short oneshots which may not be posted in strict chronological order.)





	1. Introductions

**Author's Note:**

> To recap the situation at the end of _Last Train_ : Rey had moved from Toronto to Vancouver for a job as an orthopedic surgeon, ending her short-term relationship with Ben. Despite his hatred of the city where he grew up, Ben came back to B.C. because his mother was gravely ill. When they met again they admitted that they cared for each other and wanted to try to make a relationship work.
> 
> Please note that this story discusses cancer & the side effects of its treatment. However, after Carrie Fisher's death I lost any interest in killing off her fictional avatar; you can rest assured that Leia will survive to the end of this story.

Rey knew Ben outclassed her. It was obvious, from the way he talked about his childhood and the dozens of thoughtless mannerisms that revealed he was used to having money. But she didn’t realize just how rich his family must be until he parked in front of a bloody mansion.

She’d been staring wide-eyed through the car window for blocks. This neighbourhood was one of the old-moniest in Vancouver; its broad, quiet streets were lined with trees and immense gardens spread out in front of two or three-story houses that looked like they dated back to the early 1900s. Most of them were decked out in lavish but tasteful Christmas displays. Every property they’d passed had to be worth millions of dollars in this city’s crazy real-estate market, but the half-timbered, Queen Anne style one he’d stopped in front of was the biggest and most impressive on the block. Its shaded, lush front garden was overgrown with lacy ferns, hydrangeas the size of basketballs and broad-leaved hostas, and a huge pine tree thickly strung with twinkling golden lights.

Rey swallowed back nervous saliva and yanked at a thread trailing from the cuff of her thrifted wool coat. She was wearing her nicest pair of Gap jeans and a green cashmere turtleneck she’d found on sale at a discount outlet. She would never, ever fit in a place like this.

“Are you sure about this?” Her voice quivered just a touch. 

“We don’t have to go in.” Ben took her cold hands and pressed them between his enormous palms. “Actually, if you want to chicken out, I’d be thrilled for the excuse to avoid my dad. But trust me, he and my mom are going to love you.”

Rey’s spine had jolted upright when he accused her of cowardice. Mouth set in a stubborn line, she undid her seatbelt, jerked the car door open and got out. “I am not chickening out. Let’s do this.”

Ben’s smug smile as he unfolded himself from the driver’s seat was how she realized that she’d just been had. In revenge, she dug her elbow into his stomach when they came to a stop on the front step. He rang the doorbell, which sounded as deep and sonorous as church chimes, and took her cold hand again as they waited.

The woman who opened the door was using a cane for support, but her posture was as straight and regal as a ballerina’s and her hair was braided into a silvered crown. Rey recognized Leia Organa from the photo in the newspaper, though she looked paper-fragile now.

Ben stepped forward and bent down, engulfing her in a careful hug. She patted his back with her left hand and Rey blinked at the size of the diamond ring flashing on her finger. “Mom,” he said, stepping back. “This is Rey.”

“I’m so happy to meet you.” Leia clasped Rey’s fingers in a strong but thin hand. “Han!” she yelled over her shoulder, at a startling volume from someone so small.

A tall, grey-haired man with Ben’s nose appeared through one of the arches in the long oak-panelled hallway. “Ben,” he said, with a stiff nod. 

Ben cleared his throat and mumbled, “Hey.”

Han rolled his eyes at his son and turned to her. “So you’re the famous Rey?” he said jovially. 

She nodded nervously and shook his hand, hoping it wasn’t sweaty. 

“Well, you must be something really special to have convinced my son to come back to B.C.”

Ben stiffened beside her and she could practically hear his jaw clench, but he managed not to say anything.

Leia placed the tip of her cane on Han’s foot and pressed down until he winced. “Come in, come in. Would you like a drink, Rey?”

“Yes, please,” she said hastily. 

 

Dinner wasn’t as awful as Rey feared. She’d been anxious about her complete lack of anything approaching formal table manners—especially at dinner with a family who had a maid, for god’s sake—but the number of pieces of sterling silver cutlery at each setting wasn't overwhelming. She kept one eye on Ben and mostly copied how he ate.

He and Han were clearly struggling to keep the peace for Leia’s sake. In practice, that meant they didn’t say much and mostly ignored each other. The conversation between Rey and Leia felt like a tennis match with both of them as spectators. 

Leia had all the expert tact, both innate and practiced, of a woman who’d been born wealthy, attended finishing school, and thrived in a male-dominated field. She kept a smooth current of light smalltalk flowing effortlessly with thoughtful questions about Rey’s job, her experiences in Vancouver so far, and other non-threatening topics. 

Even Rey’s admission that she'd grown up in the foster system hadn’t made her raise a perfectly-groomed eyebrow. The conversation only threatened to capsize once: when Leia asked how Rey and Ben had met. Rey opened her mouth and then her brain hung up—she had no idea what to say. Ben broke in with, “We used to ride the same subway line. I was such an asshole to her that she remembered me when I got in an accident and they brought me to the hospital she worked in.”

Han’s snort was eloquent. “What a surprise.” Ben glared at him and Rey poked his thigh under the table. 

“An accident?!” Strong emotion bled through into Leia’s voice for the first time. “What happened? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“It was nothing serious, Mom,” Ben said. “Just a concussion. Some jerk forgot pedestrians have the right of way.”

Rey looked sideways at Ben, but didn’t say anything about his broken collarbone or the fact it had been a very near-miss.

“Rey?” Leia set down her water goblet and stood. “Why don’t you let me show you the conservatory while Marie brews the coffee.” It wasn't a question. Rey scrambled to her feet, her knee banging against the ornate table leg. 

Ben and Han started to rise as well, but Leia didn’t even look at them, just held up a hand. “No.” 

Han protested, “It’s a bit of a hike, sweetheart—” 

“I can still walk, for Christ’s sake,” Leia snapped. “And I’m taking Rey to the conservatory because I want to talk to her without you two hovering.”

Ben sat silently watching his parents bicker, a bitter twist to his mouth, but he sat up straight when Leia pointed at him. “ _You_ are going to stay here and not fight with your father for once. If you can last ten minutes without shouting at him, I promise I won’t show Rey your Grade Nine yearbook photo.”

Ben slumped back in his seat and rolled his eyes, looking like he was that age again. “What if he shouts at me first?” 

“Then be the bigger person for once,” Leia told him. 

She swept grandly out of the room at a slow, imperious pace. Rey followed her down the central hall, trying not to stare at the grand oak staircase and the artwork on the walls. The dining room was impressive enough, but this was something else. Over the years, the Organa family seemed to have collected a gallery’s worth of stunning paintings.

“Is that a Carr?” she blurted in shock.

“Yes.” Leia nodded but didn’t pause. “My grandparents knew her; that little watercolour was a gift.”

It didn’t look that little to Rey. She shut her mouth and kept walking, though.

Rey had never heard of a conservatory as part of someone’s house before; she had no idea what to expect. Apparently what it meant was a huge sort of sunporch or greenhouse projecting from the side of the house, walled and roofed with glass. The air was warm and moist. Immense potted plants—ferns as tall as Rey, magnolia bushes, even a palm tree—filled the space with lush foliage and a little bronze fountain in one corner sent echoes splashing off the terracotta floor.

“It’s so green,” she breathed, staring around her. 

Leia shrugged. “A bit of overkill in Vancouver. Frankly, most of these plants would grow just as well outdoors in this climate. But my grandmother loved gardening, and my grandfather loved showing off how much money he could spend.” 

She lowered herself gradually into a rattan chair, gripping the arms until her knuckles whitened. Rey hesitated, uncertain how fragile Leia was but not wanting to disrespect her independence by offering unnecessary help. Leia saw her watching and gave her a tight smile. “I’m fine for now, but I’ll need a hand to get up.”

Rey nodded and quickly took the seat beside her. “What did you want to talk about?” she asked, figuring it was better to get the topic out in the open as soon as possible. Leia probably wanted to know Rey’s IQ, or her credit score, or something else that rich people cared about. 

“Hm? Oh, nothing in particular.” Leia crossed her ankles gracefully, remaining perfectly upright despite the sagging cushion of the chair. Her long skirt fell into graceful folds and her posture looked like an illustration from the fairytale of the Princess and the Pea; Rey had never seen anyone with a backbone that straight. “Mostly I wanted to force those two to be civil to each other. Ben wants to impress you, so he’s on his best behaviour, and Han won’t want to look like an asshole in front of his son’s friend either.”

Rey squeezed her hands together in her lap and didn’t respond to that, because she had no idea what to say. 

“On the other hand, I’m sure you must be tired of people asking you questions when you’re off the clock,” Leia said. “But I have been wondering about something that seems too frivolous to trouble my doctor with.”

That was definitely familiar territory; Rey was used to people asking her about all kinds of personal problems as soon as they heard she was a doctor. “Go ahead.” She just hoped she knew the answer.

“Am I going to lose my hair?” Leia smoothed a thin hand over the tight coil of her silver-streaked braids self-consciously. “I shouldn’t care, but it was always my one vanity, especially on the bench. Judicial robes are so unflattering. I took pride in the fact that at least my hair looked good.”

“Uh, it’s not really my field...” Rey swallowed, trying to gauge how much honesty Leia wanted, and decided to be candid. “But hair loss is a nearly universal side effect of most chemo drugs. It can happen in different ways, though. You might lose it all at once, or just a little. And it might not happen until the treatment is over.”

“Oh, well,” Leia sighed. “That’s that.”

“You could cut it short, maybe,” Rey suggested. “If you do start to lose it, it would be less noticeable, and there won’t be so much long hair in the shower drain.” She twisted a loop of her own hair around one finger in illustration. “I know what that’s like.”

Leia made a small, considering noise. “I don’t think I’ve had hair above my shoulders since I was in grade school. It would be worth it just to see Han’s reaction.” She grinned, and the wicked edge to it made Rey catch her breath. She’d seen that same expression on Ben’s face.

“Now, was there anything you wanted to ask me?” Leia tipped her head inquiringly. “I must admit, I’m a bit surprised my son managed to attract such a wonderful young woman. I love him dearly, but I’m not blind to his faults. On his best days he can be rude, overbearing, and insensitive.”

Rey blushed and stared straight ahead at the water spilling into the fountain basin. “Yeah. But he… he’s trying.” She wasn’t sure how to tell his mother that Ben was the first person to force his way into her heart in years, and that part of the reason why might have been that he was such an asshole. Neither of them were much good at being a people person, in their (very) different ways. 

“Well. As long as he’s making you happy, that’s what matters.” Leia reached over and patted her hand. “But don’t hesitate to ask me or Han for anything we can do, no matter what state your relationship with Ben is in. Our circumstances were very different, of course, but I know a little bit about what it’s like to be left alone too young.”

To her horror, Rey felt her lip start to wobble. Why did Leia have to be so kind? Rey wasn’t an oncologist, but she’d seen enough to know that it didn’t matter how determined someone was. Cancer was the ultimate bad luck lottery; it took the loved and the unloved, the weak and the strong, the passive and the ones who fought every step of the way. 

She really, really wanted Leia to beat it, though. Because she thought she might love Ben, and he clearly needed more time with his mother to give him a fighting chance to mend some of the rifts he’d caused with his family. And because she thought she could easily grow to care for Leia in her own right, no matter what ended up happening with her and Ben.

Leia’s thin fingers tightened over Rey’s. “Shall we go back to the dining room? Hopefully, they won't have started throwing food at each other yet.”

Rey sniffed and nodded and took Leia’s arm to help her out of the low chair.

 

Rey had been ready to plead an early shift at the hospital tomorrow to get away, but in the end she didn’t need to; Ben's parents didn’t press them to stay after coffee and dessert. As they stood in the front hall, putting on shoes and coats, Leia asked, “Rey, will you be in the city for Christmas or are you going back to Ontario?”

Rey could sense Ben grimacing at his mom over her shoulder, but she didn’t mind answering the question honestly. “No. I can’t afford a plane ticket this year.” 

“Please come for Christmas dinner, then. Both of you.” Leia laid her hand on Ben’s forearm and squeezed. “Luke will be here, and you haven’t seen him in years.”

“Oh, great, the pothead hermit shows up,” Ben muttered.

“And Chuy,” Han added.

“Uncle Chuy?” Ben sounded almost pleased, and his face lightened before he remembered to scowl again.

“I don’t know yet whether I’ll be working over Christmas,” Rey broke in. Considering her lack of seniority in the hospital hierarchy, she probably would be, but it seemed better to leave things gracefully open-ended. “Thank you for the invitation, anyway.”

“Good to meet you, Rey.” Han stepped up and shook hands stiffly with his son, giving him an awkward smack on the shoulder. “Thanks for coming, kid. You’ll be by to pick your mom up tomorrow, right? She's got a chemo session at nine.”

“Yeah, I know it's my turn,” Ben said, his tone gritty with annoyance.

Rey kept the smile fixed on her face, grabbed Ben’s hand and pulled him out the door. Time to leave right now: on a relatively high note and before Ben and his father managed to irritate each other into a real argument instead of mild sniping.

In the car, he stared straight ahead through the windshield and gripped the steering wheel so hard she heard it creak. “Could’ve been worse, I guess.”

"What did you and your dad talk about while your mom and I were in the conservatory?" she asked.

"Motorcycles." Ben shrugged. "That's about our only topic of conversation that doesn't end up in a screaming match." He looked over at her searchingly. "Did that go okay? Mom means well, but she can be a little overbearing." 

"Yeah." Rey smiled, remembering Leia using the same word to describe her son. Clearly the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree. "Your mom's great. Really."

"I'm glad you liked her." He pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear, his hand lingering on her cheek, and blew out a vast sigh. "Well, at least that's over and done."


	2. Confessions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chronologically, this takes place just before the first chapter.

“Just tell me what _not_ to talk about, at least.” Rey banged the fridge door shut, rattling the jars inside. “I don’t want to put my foot in it by bringing up a sensitive topic.”

She’d been on edge ever since Ben told her his mom had invited them over for dinner this weekend; the prospect of meeting his parents made her incredibly nervous, for some reason. He had no idea why. He was pretty sure they’d offer to disinherit him and adopt Rey within five minutes of meeting her.

“Please?” she repeated.

Rey was probably right; it wasn’t fair to expect her to walk into an Organa-Solo family dinner without knowing about any of the quicksand underfoot. He just didn’t want her to know what an awful person he was. Still, he reasoned with himself, if she was staying with him, if she had to meet his parents… she’d find out some day. There was no way around it. If it made her leave—better sooner than later. So he might as well tell her the whole story.

He sighed. “Sit down,” he told her, and got up to get himself a beer. He was going to need at least one to get through this.

Rey sat down at the rickety little kitchen table and popped open her can of Diet Coke. She lived on that stuff and coffee; Ben didn’t understand how so much caffeine could flow through her veins without turning her eyes black.

The cheap IKEA chair creaked under his weight as he sat down and twisted the cap off his Granville Island. 

“Ben.” She leaned forward and touched his hand. “I want to know what happened between you and your parents, because I’d like to know more about you. But you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. And whatever you say, it’s not going to change my mind about you.” 

She looked completely sincere; she probably even believed what she was saying. 

“As a lawyer, I’m telling you that kind of blanket pardon is a terrible idea.” He swallowed. Fuck, he loved her, and he still hadn’t actually said the words out loud. After she heard this, he might never get the chance either. “What if I told you something that made you hate me?”

“I don’t see that happening.” Rey studied him carefully. “I know you, Ben, at least a little bit. I don’t think you’re perfect. Trust me, I know you can be arrogant, selfish...”

“You’re not wrong. Addicts are selfish, all right.” He was proud that his voice didn’t shake, much. He took a sip of beer to wet his throat and tried to figure out where to start. Like ripping a bandaid off, he told himself; just do it. “Try not to interrupt, okay?”

Rey drew her bottom lip between her teeth and nodded, seriously. 

He looked up at the ceiling, blinking carefully and pulling himself together. He had to get this out quickly. “I was a little shit in high school.” 

Rey’s eyes brightened and she grinned, but he held up a hand. “Not like you’re thinking. This wasn’t cute, eyeliner-wearing punk rebellion. It was bad seed stuff: selling drugs, assault. I got away with it because I was lucky, there was no permanent damage—and because of who my parents were. But I got expelled from one school after another, which didn’t do much for my grades.”

It had made friendships hard to maintain, too, so he’d always been a loner. But that was his own damn fault (like everything else, of course) and he wasn’t about to bring that up to wring some pity out of Rey. 

“You’re right about me being arrogant, too. I wasn’t going to get addicted, oh no, I could control it. Which was bullshit, of course.” He kept talking, although it got harder with each word he forced out, like taking another step through thickening mud, or steeper up a mountain slope. His voice shook under the strain. “So I was a junkie who did all the usual junkie shit: I lied, I stole…”

He took another long swallow of his beer. “I managed to scrape into UBC anyway. I kept acting up through undergrad, though, which was a problem because now I was over eighteen. Once I got caught, which of course I did, it was going to mean a permanent record. Which would have made passing the bar nearly impossible.”

Rey nodded again, watching him over the rim of her Coke can. 

“So my dad pulled strings. He even lied for me, which got me off the hook but also meant that once it leaked he had to resign in disgrace. Mom and Dad’s marriage was already rocky—they argued all the time because of me. It didn’t survive the fallout of his career ending. As a judge, she couldn’t be seen to condone her husband’s actions. She left him.”

Ben picked at the sweating label of his beer, peeling it off in strips. “Worst of all, my dad didn’t give up on me.” He laughed, unamused. “He told me his price for getting me off the charges was for me to quit dealing and go to rehab. I did, but I hated him for it. Once I was out I took off for Ontario without a word. And I didn’t talk to him for eleven years, until he called to say Mom had cancer.”

Rey’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything. She put her pop can down and played with the tab, twisting it until it snapped off. 

“It sounds more dramatic than it was. In the end, it comes down to the fact we just never understood each other—he was so different. I was more like my mom, and I guess he felt left out? And I hated him for swooping in to help me; I felt like he was going to hold it over my head for the rest of my life. I called him a hypocrite, too, because I’d heard about some of the shit he got up to when he was young—he and my uncles were no saints either.”

He let out the breath he hadn’t been able to propel out of his lungs earlier. “So there you have it.”

Rey got out of her chair and dropped into his lap. She curled her arms around his shoulders and rubbed her fingertips through his hair, gently scratching at the nape of his neck. “Okay. Thank you for telling me.” 

Something in Ben still felt the need to warn her about him. “Now you know why I’m shitty boyfriend material.”

She stared at him searchingly, so close he could count each fine-grained cinnamon freckle dusted on her nose. “Are you the same person you were back then?”

Ben had wondered the same thing. He didn't think so... but how could he tell, until he spent more time around his family? He certainly didn’t want to turn back into that asshole. Maybe that was the reason he’d refused to come home for so long. “I don’t know. I hope not.”

Rey pulled his head down to rest on her chest and kissed the top of his head, her breasts moving enticingly against his cheek each time she inhaled. He skimmed his hand up her side, pushing her shirt up, and traced his fingers along the band of her sports bra.

“Can we not talk about my parents anymore?” he mumbled into her cleavage. 

“Fair enough,” Rey said with a laughing lilt in her voice, and tugged him up by the hair for a kiss.


	3. Assumptions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First Valentine's Day, first fight.

“Fuck you, Ben! And your dinner reservations!” Rey stormed out, slamming the apartment door behind her so hard the thin wall shook and one of the magnets pinning takeout menus to the fridge fell off.

Shit. Ben was left staring at the closed door, still clutching a bouquet of white roses and orchids like an idiot. He hurled the flowers at the sink from across the room, scattering petals and ripping a gash in his thumb with a thorn. “Goddammit!” He stuck the bleeding digit in his mouth. 

“Shit, shit, _shit_ ,” he mumbled around his thumb. He’d fucked up. Again—and huge this time. He grabbed a hunk of paper towel and pressed it to his thumb, wincing as it blotted crimson. He collapsed into a chair and stared at the door. How the hell had a romantic gesture turned into this? Was Rey going to come back, ever? Or was this her way of breaking up without saying the words?

Ben forced himself to take a deep breath and not to do what he really wanted to do: go find something that would fuck him up good, whether it was coke or a fight. He might not be a better person, but he’d learned better than that at least. Another deep breath. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Ben looked up the number he had saved in his phone for emergencies and called Finn. 

He didn’t remember that it was three hours later in Toronto until a sleepy, pissed-off voice answered. Well, Finn was a nurse, his sleep patterns had to be just as screwed up as Rey’s. “Sorry,” Ben muttered. “Did I wake you?”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Finn yawned. “Just tell me what you did in less than thirty seconds so I can decide whether to hang up on you.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Ben protested. The worst thing was that as far as he could tell, this was objectively true. “She came home late and had totally forgotten it was, you know, Valentine’s Day. I was a little annoyed that we missed out on a dinner reservation it was fucking hard to get, and somehow the fact that I tried to do something _nice_ for her turned into an argument about me not supporting her career.”

“Is it V-Day?” Finn said with mild interest. “I can never keep track of those things either. Hey, Poe, why didn’t you give me any flowers? Or a card?”

Some incoherent mumbling on the other side of the line demonstrated that Finn’s boyfriend was just as sleepy. Ben clenched the hand not holding his phone into a fist before he lost it altogether. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about Finn’s relationship, but he had just enough self-control left not to say that out loud. “Let’s not get sidetracked here. Just tell me how to fix it.”

“I don't have nearly enough time to fix your issues, dude. I have a shift in five hours, so I’m going back to sleep. But I’ll get Jess to phone you. She’s your best bet—listen to whatever she tells you.”

Ben shoved his hand through his hair and fought to keep his breathing even. “Please. I’m desperate.”

“I know you are.” Finn didn’t bother with goodbye; the beep of the call disconnecting was the only sign he’d hung up.

Ben left his phone on the kitchen table and got up to make himself a cup of coffee. He turned the Keurig on and saw Rey’s mug where he’d set it out earlier, on the counter with a tea bag inside, waiting for her to come home and drink a post-shift cup of that disgusting herbal stuff she liked. He felt like even more of an asshole. 

His phone chimed once and Ben dove for it. 

“Hi, Ben.” Jessika—he dredged his memory for all the details he could remember: Rey’s former roommate, lesbian, doctoral student, cat person—sounded weary and annoyed, but at least not angry. “Spill.”

He told her what had happened, trying to stress that his intentions had been good but somehow he’d stepped into a fucking minefield and then managed to tap dance all over it, setting off Rey’s explosive anger about… he didn’t know what, exactly. After all his long-winded explanations and justifications ground to a halt, a long sigh whistled out of the phone speaker. “You know you’re an idiot, right?”

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” he muttered. “Just tell me how to fix it.”

“I’m not a relationship counsellor, and even if I were, I wouldn’t talk to you without Rey’s knowledge. All I’m going to say is that assumptions are the death of any relationship. You assumed that she’d find this kind of gesture romantic instead of presumptuous. And Rey assumed that you knew how important establishing her career is to her right now. You both need to start spelling these things out instead of thinking that the other one can read your mind.”

That actually made a surprising amount of sense. Then Ben remembered the most salient detail about Jessika. “You’re a psychologist, aren’t you?”

“Just licensed, yeah.”

“Oh.” 

The fear in his voice must have been audible to Jess, because her voice became gentle and soothing in that shrink sort of tone they all seemed to practice. “You know Rey talks to me about some of this stuff, right?”

“Yeah.” In fact, Ben tried not to think about it, but it was a logical thing for her to do. He understood, in an intellectual way, that people like Rey who actually _had_ friends were able to rely on them for emotional support.

“It seems like you’re trying pretty hard given what she says. And most of the time, she sounds a lot happier than when she first moved out there. So for that, I’m going to give you a solid tip.”

“Please.” Ben closed his eyes and prepared to commit whatever Jess was about to say to memory. “I’m listening.” 

“Rey doesn’t give a shit about Valentines, she’s never really cared about that hearts and flowers kind of stuff. But her birthday means a lot to her. You’d better make a big deal about it, even if she says she doesn’t want it.”

“Shit.” Ben panicked. Had he already screwed this up beyond repair? He didn’t even know what Rey’s birthdate was. “ _Shit_. When is it?”

“March 28.” 

Oh, thank god. He sighed in relief. He still had six weeks to come up with the best birthday present ever. “Thank you, Jess. Thank you so much.”

There was a long, weighted silence on the other end of the line before she said, “Just don’t ever make Rey call me at one o’clock in the morning again.”

“She called you?” Ben knew he sounded deranged but he couldn’t help himself. “Where is she? Is she okay? Does she need anything, should I call—”

“She’s fine, and I told her she should go home and talk to you in person. She’s probably on her way back right now. Calm down and be prepared to actually listen to her.” The “idiot” at the end of the sentence was silent but well-understood.

“Okay.” Ben pressed his lips together firmly and nodded. He could do that. “Thank you, Jessika.”

After she hung up Ben leaned forward in the chair and put his head in his hands. He felt limp with exhaustion, like he’d run ten miles. He blinked rapidly and pressed the heel of his palms into his eyes, pulling himself together. No time to wallow. He got up and looked around, wondering what to do while he waited for Rey to come back. At least he might be able to salvage some of the flowers. And make her tea.

Most of the orchids had fallen apart, but the roses were surprisingly resilient. He was putting the survivors in a rinsed out salsa jar and the kettle was just beginning to whistle when Rey opened the door softly. 

“Hi.” She dropped her coat on the floor and leaned against the counter, trying to smile. “Can we talk?”

Ben nodded.


End file.
